Job Offer Comparison Calculator

How to compare two job offers

Net = (Base + Bonus + Retirement + Benefits) − (Health premium + Commute + Other costs)

Every line is an annual amount you enter. Put both offers on the same footing — same period, same before-tax basis, same assumptions — and the comparison becomes arithmetic instead of an argument with yourself. The tool reports which offer is higher and by how much; it does not recommend an offer.

The reason this is worth doing on paper is that the two halves pull in opposite directions. Employers compete on the headline base salary because it is the number people compare, while the costs that quietly reverse the result — your share of the health premium, a longer commute, parking — never appear in the offer letter.

What goes in each line

Four lines are what the employer pays you; three are what the job costs you. Annual figures throughout.

• Base salary — the contracted annual figure, before tax. For an hourly offer, annualize it first.
• Guaranteed bonus — only what is contractual. Leave a discretionary bonus out, or enter a figure you would still take the job at.
• Employer retirement contribution — the match in dollars, not the percentage. A 5% match on $80,000 is $4,000, and only if you contribute enough to earn it in full.
• Other recurring benefits — anything with a defensible annual cash value: a transit subsidy, a phone allowance, a tuition benefit you will actually use.
• Health premium you pay — your payroll deduction over a year, not the employer’s cost. This is the single line most often left out, and it routinely runs into thousands.
• Commute cost — fuel, fares, parking and tolls for a full year of the schedule the job actually requires.
• Other recurring costs — relocation you absorb, required equipment, professional licences, childcare that only one of the two schedules forces on you.

If a line applies equally to both offers, you can leave it out of both. It cancels, and the difference between the two totals stays the same.

Comparing an hourly offer with a salaried one

Annual pay = Hourly rate × Hours per week × Paid weeks per year

At 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, $30.00 an hour is $62,400 a year. That makes it directly comparable with a salary — but only on the money. The gap that usually decides it is paid time off.

Say the salaried role pays $65,000 and includes 15 days of leave plus 10 public holidays. That is 25 paid days, or 200 hours, you are paid for without working. You do the job in about 1,880 hours, so the salary is worth roughly $34.57 an hour of actual work. The $30.00 hourly offer has to be worked for every one of its 2,080 hours to reach $62,400 — and any week you are sick or the work dries up, it pays nothing.

So annualize the hourly rate to fill in the base salary line, then treat unpaid leave as a real difference rather than a rounding error. Overtime cuts the other way: if the hourly role reliably pays time and a half beyond 40 hours and the salaried one expects unpaid extra hours, the hourly offer can be the better-paid job by a wide margin.

Worked example: when the lower base wins

Offer A: $90,000 base, $5,000 bonus, $4,500 retirement match, minus $2,400 health premium and $3,000 commuting = $94,100 net. Offer B: $95,000 base, $2,850 match, $500 benefits, minus $1,200 premium and $6,000 commuting = $91,150 net. Offer A is higher by $2,950 per year (about $245.83 per month) on these numbers, despite a base salary $5,000 lower.

The reversal comes from two lines nobody negotiates: a weaker retirement match and twice the commuting cost. Together they are worth more than the $5,000 of base pay that made Offer B look better in the first place.

Worked example: when the higher base holds up

The costs do not always reverse the result, and it is worth seeing a case where they do not. Offer A: $80,000 base, $4,000 guaranteed bonus, $4,000 retirement match (5%), minus $1,200 health premium and $600 commuting = $86,200 net. Offer B: $110,000 base, $3,300 match (3%), no bonus, minus $4,800 premium and $5,400 commuting = $103,100 net.

Offer B is ahead by $16,900 a year. A $30,000 gap in base pay is simply too large for a worse match, a richer premium and a longer commute to close — those three lines cost $8,300 between them, and the base advantage is nearly four times that. The point of running the numbers is not that the lower offer usually wins; it is that you find out which case you are in.

The commute is a real number

Annual commute cost = One-way miles × 2 × Days per week × Working weeks × Cost per mile

Fifteen miles each way, five days a week, 48 working weeks, at $0.60 a mile comes to 7,200 miles and about $4,320 a year — before parking and tolls. On a $70,000 offer that is more than 6% of the salary, spent to reach the job.

Then there is the time, which the calculator does not price because only you can. Forty-five minutes each way is an hour and a half a day, 7.5 hours a week, and about 360 hours a year — nine working weeks of unpaid time. A hybrid arrangement of two days at home cuts both the money and the hours by 40%, which is often worth more than the raise being argued over.

What the total does not capture

The comparison is a snapshot of one year. Several things that decide whether an offer was a good decision never appear in it:

• Where the pay goes next. A lower offer at an employer that promotes and raises pay properly overtakes a higher one that freezes it, usually within a few years.
• Hours actually worked. Two salaries that match on paper are not equal if one job runs 45 hours and the other 60.
• Vesting and clawbacks. A match or signing bonus you would forfeit by leaving inside two years is not fully yours yet.
• Security and the shape of the work — who you report to, whether the role builds skills you can sell later, how exposed the employer is.

Use the total to find out how much money is genuinely at stake. If the gap turns out to be small, that is useful information: it means you can decide on everything else without paying for it.

Limitations

The comparison is before tax and ignores equity, raises, vesting schedules, hours, and non-monetary factors. Retirement contributions are compared at face value even though they are not spendable income today.

It also assumes both offers run for a full year on the terms you enter. A role with a probation period on different benefits, a bonus paid only after twelve months, or a relocation package that lands once will not be described accurately by a single annual figure.